Joe Kelley
Administrator
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Printing History
The risk of discipline by the authorities was a constant possibility for all colonial printers. Licensing laws were in effect in Massachusetts from 1662 until the 1720s, and the various governors' instructions gave them de facto rights to assert licensing powers. Both governors and legislatures were quick to take offense at any publications they found disagreeable, and there were sporadic cases of persecution for seditious libel, beginning with William Bradford in 1692 and continuing until the Revolution. Clyde Duniway, Leonard Levy, Stephen Botein, and Robert Harlan have all discussed the question of freedom of the press and the colonial printers, and I will not pursue it here, except to say that the printers generally sought to avoid trouble by not giving offense.
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